


i've never been in love (but i've never been opposed to it)

by rulesTheGalaxy



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bay Area / Tech Scene / Silicon Valley, F/M, Plot, Romance, Slow Burn, TA Kylo Ben, kylo hacks his way into my heart, rey and kylo are NERDS, there might be some angst, there will be dormcest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-03-09 15:06:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13484049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rulesTheGalaxy/pseuds/rulesTheGalaxy
Summary: “All right,” Ben cleared his throat and looked around the lecture hall. “For anyone else who wasn’t listening just now, our very first unit will be on AI security. Anyone else have any questions?” Rey gulped and wished she could sink into the wall.  From a few rows up, Finn threw her a piteous look.----The University/Tech-Scene AU, with Ben Solo as the prickly but lovable TA, and Rey as *that* girl who always comes to Friday night Office Hours.





	1. Meet Cute?

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Plot Twist" by Mark E. Bassy.
> 
> This is my first Reylo fic and I'm getting back into writing fiction (of any sort) after a while! Chapter 1 was mostly a world building chapter, and I'm very excited for the upcoming ones in which I get to explore more zany situations and character development ;) Let me know what you thought, all comments welcome! You can also find me at @theshiparoundthecorner on Tumblr.

This was _not,_ Rey mused as she grunted her suitcase up one step at a time, the way she had imagined beginning her junior year of college. She was strong but the ratted suitcase that held all of her belongings was heavier, and she paused, midway on the stairs, to catch her breath. The dorm (too old to have an elevator) was curiously empty, all of the students having fled studiously, and perhaps for the only time in the year, to their morning classes.

Rey would have been one of them, she thought, frowning at her yellow shirt, if she didn’t live in a fudging desert in which the tarmac could actually get so hot that planes couldn’t land or take off. _Only in Arizona_ , she thought, valiantly continuing with her effort. As soon as she got to the top step her phone buzzed, startling her and almost undoing all the progress she had made.

Finn: “Hey r u here yet? Snoke’s computer security class just started”

Just as she had finished reading her phone buzzed again, and Rey smiled to herself. Finn was the most _atrocious_ double texter – if her best friend didn’t sent her four messages in a row she assumed he was mad at her.

Finn: “Head TA has this weird Hades vibe going on...Snoke’s not here so the dude’s lecturing”

Finn: “Who the fuck names their kid Armitage”

Finn: “PHASMA IS A TA??? holy shit Rey you gotta come save me”

Rey laughed out loud as she unlocked her room (a two room double!), Rose’s room already set up and neatly visible next to her bare one.

“OK OK stop live tweeting a class you nerd! I’m putting my stuff in my room, be there in 10”

* * *

 

By the time Rey reached the lecture hall, her annoyance from the delayed flight had dissipated and she was smiling and humming. She was going to see her friends after a whole three months apart! Finn was of course in this class, being a Computer Science major, Rose (she had a feeling) might be tagging along with Finn even though she was a law student.

Just on that note, Rey’s phone buzzed again with a message from Rose.

“Gurl where are you? This head TA is smoking. In an emo way. But still.”

Rey laughed again, realizing how much she had missed this banter, and slipped into the lecture hall.

Almost every seat in the hall was taken, she noticed with some surprise – at least two hundred people – and she was only able to get into a middle seat with some whispered “excuse me’s”, one nearly avoided fall, and one clumsy “oof” as she finally fell into her chair.

She had been so concentrated on making her way to her seat, and honestly so embarrassed, that she hadn’t looked up at all at said hot TA. Until now.

Rey was inclined to agree with Rose, she thought, as she looked up at him. He was so _tall._ The podium looked like some sort of footstool in front of his broad shoulders and startlingly white arms, his hands jammed into his pockets. She also thought he looked rather, well, _nervous,_ as he looked out into the sea of students and went on about computer security flaws. There were the hands in the pockets, of course, but there was also the way his lips made this odd bobbing motion every so often and the way his eyes shifted around the room, never standing still.

And then he looked directly at her, and she could have sworn that a flicker of _annoyance_ crossed his face. She gulped and leaned back, thinking of her less than spectacular entrance to the room. But no, surely she was just being self-conscious.

 _Ben_ was scrolled in perfect handwriting on the white board behind him – and he wore the standard Bay Area uniform of a tech t-shirt and jeans, except all black. Was his hair _also_ naturally black? Finn was definitely right about the Hades vibe. Wait, Finn!

She took her phone out to relay the good news to him: “Yo I’m here and you’re right about the lord of the Underworld over here”

“I know you’re here,” her phone buzzed, “I figured when I heard the entire back row crashing down”

“Oh sod off and tell me where you are”

Just then she caught sight of Finn’s head turning around from a few rows up, and forgetting the fact that she was in a fudging _class_ , so excited at seeing her best friend for the first time in months, she began to _wave_ to him right there, without any thought of what it would look like.

“Yes – You over there! In the yellow shirt!”

Rey nearly fell out of her seat, realizing too late what had happened.

“Yes, you! You had a question?” The TA, Ben, leaned forward on the podium and she gulped, unsure of what to do or say. There was a sort of eagerness on his face that quickly faded as he realized what had happened.

“No? We’re just waving now? OK then...” If he had been annoyed before, Rey gulped, he was definitely scowling now.

“No wait! I – I do have a question” _Shut up shut up shut up, Rey,_ the one part of her with any sense whispered to her. He looked down at her, waiting.

“Will we be covering security of AI models in this class?” she choked out. There was dead silence.

“All right,” Ben cleared his throat and looked around the lecture hall. “For anyone _else_ who wasn’t listening two minutes ago, our very first unit will be on AI security. Are there any more questions?” Rey gulped and wished she could sink into the wall. From a few rows up, Finn threw her a piteous look.

* * *

 

“REY FREAKING NIIMA!” Finn charged towards her outside the lecture hall and Rey, who had exited the auditorium as soon as the lecture ended, shrieked and hurled herself at him. The hug was warm and so _Finn_ that it soothed her rather lacerated ego.

“Rey!!” suddenly Rose appeared and Rey laughed as she was enveloped in the shorter girl’s surprisingly strong arms.

“Oh my god,” Rose drew back from her and looked at her. “You’ve had such a hard day! I don’t think he’s cute anymore.” She play-whispered the last part, and Rey cringed.

She _would_ make a fool of herself in the very first hour of junior year, and in front of the meanest TAs in history too.

“Hey, that guy was a jerk,” Finn reassured her.

“A true jerk-face,” Rose chimed in. “Again, not cute.”

Rey laughed and patted her two friends on the back on the back.

“I’ll survive,” she assured them, and it was true. At that moment, Ben finally walked out of the lecture hall, followed by the two who Rey surmised must have been the other TAs. What a strange group of TAs it was, mused Rey, with the emo Ben, a red-haired boy in a long, designer black trench, and a tall girl with a shock of platinum blond hair. The girl’s green eyes glinted at them at they passed, and from Finn’s reaction Rey knew immediately that the girl was Phasma.

Finn had done research with her last summer, or something like that. Rey never knew the full story because Finn started stuttering and changed the subject every time she asked about it – but Rey knew at the very least that Phasma had terrorized Finn so much that he never wanted to do research again. Rey tried very hard not to stare at the three of them, but her eyes met Ben’s dark ones and she swallowed dryly.

“Rey,” Rose tugged at her sleeve, calling her back from whatever shady alleys her mind had been walking. “Come on, Poe’s messaging us! He’s waiting at the Cantina.” 

* * *

 

“Hey you!” Poe exclaimed, enveloping her in a gigantic hug as soon as they reached the Cantina. “How was your summer?” He brushed his windswept brown hair out of his eyes, and Rey could have sworn two sorority girls who were passing them literally dropped her jaws at his good looks. Finn and Rose snorted.

“Oh you know,” Rey replied, still grinning from his hug, “As good as working in Plutt’s garage can be.”

Poe shook his head. “Why do you work there every summer anyway? He’s barely paying any money for your college. You have to work two jobs to make up the tuition.”  
“He’s paying a decent amount,” protested Rey somewhat halfheartedly. “I’d have to work three jobs if he didn’t. Anyways, I don’t have to live with him when I go back, you know I sublet that apartment from Maz, so it’s fine.”

Maz was the owner of the Cantina, who Rey had quickly befriended freshman year, and who just _happened_ to know an elderly couple with an apartment in Phoenix; they sublet to Rey every summer for a pretty low price. Maz knew everyone, mused Rey, she could probably help Rey get a house in Antarctica if she needed it.

“Anyways,” Rey inquired as the four of them waited in the line for sandwiches, “How was your summer working for _Senator_ _Leia Organa?”_ She pronounced the senator’s name with an audible hint of excitement.

“Yes Rey,” protested Finn, “we know, we know, you _love_ Leia Organa--”

“She’s the light of your life, you’ve looked up to her since you were four –” added Rose, also rolling her eyes.

“You wrote your application essay on her --” Finn continued.

“Okay, to be fair,” Poe came to her defense. “But how many other people do you know who were FBI agents, and then University presidents, and then Senators? What she’s done for this University, and now the government – God, I hope she runs for President.”

“Alright flyboy,” Finn mumbled, using their nickname for the ex-ROTC pilot, “don’t you start with the fangirling now too.”

Rey ignored the two of them and turned to Poe hungrily.

“What’s she like? What did you work on? Did you – ” she leaned closer to him, whispering so Finn and Rose couldn’t hear. “Did you get her autograph for me?”

“Rey,” Poe shook his head at her, “I wasn’t going to go ask the Senator for an autograph, how embarrassing would that be?”

Rey looked crushed.

“But I did you one better, ” went on Poe, pulling an envelope from the inside of his leather jacket. “She wrote you a letter.”

Rey’s squeal reverberated throughout the entire Cantina, startling Rose into almost dropping her tray and Finn into knocking into her.

“Why are you shrieking, child?” Maz peered over the register at her, and Rey grinned at the extremely short, elderly Asian woman who had become one of her best friends at the University.

“ _Senator Organa_ wrote her a letter,” explained Finn helpfully to Maz. Rey snatched the letter from Poe and gazed adoringly at the neat handwriting, before carefully slipping it into her bag to be read in the privacy of her own room.

Maz smiled through a face full of wrinkles. “Ah, Leia. I knew her very very well when she was first a professor, and then President of this University. She was so young then, and her son had just been born.” Maz’s old eyes tread across paths of memory and years, back to a smiling university couple and a boy with a shock of dark hair.

“Do you know her son has come back to do a PhD here?” she said suddenly, her eyes oddly meeting Rey’s. Rey shook her head, surprised.

“Yes,” continued Maz, “He’s not in your department of Mechanical Engineering, Rey, nor the law school, Rose. You might know him, though, Finn – he studies computer science. His name is Ben.”

* * *

 

“Ben?” The shocked expression on Finn’s face mirrored the one on Rey’s. “Does he TA for Professor Snoke?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Maz said wryly, but Rey was still too shocked to question what lay behind those words.

“ _Ben Solo?_ The son of Leia and Han Solo is – a _Jerkface TA?”_

Poe snorted next to her. “What? A jerkface?”

Finn and Rose explained the events of this morning to Poe, who (bless him) arose ardently to Rey’s defense as they tucked into lunch. For her own part, Rey wasn’t so inclined to be on her own side any more – she _had_ been in the wrong, she supposed, even if Ben had been a bit rough.

“Why are you in this class, anyway, Rose?” Poe inquired. Rose shrugged.

“I didn’t have any class until 3pm, and I figured I’d get to hang with both Finn and Rey.”

“And why are _you_ taking computer security, Rey?” Poe asked, “you’re a mechanical engineering major!”

“It fulfills a requirement,” Rey lied smoothly, and the matter ended there, with everyone returning to their plates. The truth was that she took the class because otherwise she wouldn’t have any classes with Finn, and though she would never admit it, she was afraid that they would drift apart if they didn’t see each other every day – that he would find someone cooler to hang out with than her. And the class did look _somewhat_ interesting.

“We come to you now with breaking news --” Rey suddenly became aware of the TV blaring behind her. “Reports indicate further tampering in the United States elections by an international hacking organization calling themselves the First Order. Reports further indicate that the most severe damage was carried out by a smaller, more elite part of the First Order known as the Knights of Ren. Here to give us more information about the hacking groups of the Dark Web, and possible ties with Russia, is Larry-”

“Hey,” Poe squinted at the TV. “I wrote a report on the First Order for Leia this summer. Leia’s part of the Senate Intelligence committee – She thinks this group’s a real threat, but she’s having a hard time convincing others. They just see these guys as a group of tech bros trying to make money off the Russians.”

Finn and Rose had zoned out, but Rey looked at the TV with interest. This is why she thought computer security would be a cool class – it actually mattered so much in this day and age! If only – here her thoughts flicked back uncomfortably to this morning. She hated it when people disliked her, and now Ben Solo, her _idol’s_ son, had it out for her. This was going to be such a long semester, she thought, idly turning her fork around her plate. Then her thoughts went back to the letter in her bag, and she smiled.

Long, she thought, but perhaps bearable.


	2. Rey of Sunshine

_My Dearest Rey,_

_I hope this letter finds you in the best of health. Although we haven’t met, I feel like I know you personally since Poe brings you up without fail every time we meet. He has told me so much about you – from your tough upbringing to your talent for machinery to your hunger for knowledge. He also has dutifully requested my autograph for you without fail at least ten times – good friend, that one. In the end, I figured you would learn much more from a letter than from a copy of my name._  

_Rey, I am so proud of all you have accomplished, and excited for the accomplishments that lie ahead of you. It’s strong young women like yourself who give me hope for the future of this nation. Study hard, you’re at one of the best universities in the country, and I know you’ll succeed. I wish you the very best._

_Sincerely,_

_Leia_

_P.S. My husband Han is teaching a mechanical engineering class at your university later this year. You might enjoy it!_

 

“Hey!” Poe dropped into the empty seat next to her at Maz’s Cantina, and Rey hurriedly put the letter away. Too late, though.

 

“Are you reading Leia’s letter _again?_ ” Poe asked, exasperated. Rey shrugged her shoulders sheepishly.

 

“I swear, if you read that letter any more, I’m going to think you’re trying to forge the Senator’s handwriting.”

 

“I wonder how Ben Solo would react if he found out I had a letter from his mom in my backpack,” mused Rey out loud, not really listening to Poe’s oft repeated gripe. The thought of the TA floundering filled her with barely masked glee.

 

“Hey, what’s up, fam?” Finn and Rose set their trays down on the seats in front of her, breaking her reverie. Rey cocked an eyebrow at Finn and met eyes with Poe.

 

“What are you wearing?” Rey asked, gesturing toward Finn’s absurdly formal suit.

 

Now it was Finn’s turn to look rather sheepish. “I had an interview,” he said defensively. “Some stuffy company out East.”

 

“Weird to see you without my jacket,” Poe said, his warm eyes lingering on Finn an instant too long. Rey glanced at him suddenly, wondering if she had imagined the hint of sadness in his voice.

 

It was a _little_ sad, Rey thought. One of the first things that had bound them together had been Finn’s admiration for Poe’s vintage leather jacket from his days as a pilot. Finn had liked the jacket so much that Poe had given it to him for his birthday this year, and Finn had barely taken it off since. Rey sighed as she considered the surprisingly grown up looking Finn, a far cry from the bedraggled freshman she had once known. She thought of how quickly things could change.

 

Rose cleared her throat. “Did you go to office hours, Rey? With Phasma?”

 

Rey snorted. “Yes, I did, and I can see why Finn hates her. She came in _half an hour late_ for her own office hours and then answered every question with one syllable, like it was causing her great personal pain. She didn’t help me at _all_ on number five.”

“She didn’t call anyone any names?” Finn asked. Rey shook her head reluctantly.

“Sounds like a good day for her, then,” Finn said jovially, tucking into his pasta.

Rey groaned. “What, did they round up these TAs from the depths of hell or something? Mechanical engineering TAs are so much better. Why don’t you come with me to Hux’s office hours?”

“You know I have to work then, Peanut.” Finn smirked at her. “Besides, I haven’t even started this homework. What’s happened to you? It’s due next week and you never start till the night before.”

“I’m working double my shifts next week,” grumbled Rey.

“Can we _please_ talk about something besides computers?” Poe groaned suddenly. Rose nodded enthusiastically in agreement.

_\---_

And so Rey plodded alone to Hux’s office hours, hoping that this _Armitage_ would at least be one of the pushover TAs who would give her the answers to the homework so she could reverse-engineer it.

The only other option was to go grovel at Ben Solo’s office hours. Rey shook her head determinedly; no way she would ever sink _that_ low.

But the second Rey walked into the door and asked, “Armitage Hux?” she thought she should go fall at Ben’s feet instead.

She knew too well the way the red-haired TA swept his beady little eyes imperially over her body; it had been a look that she had gotten from countless shop-owners, mechanics, even teachers, over the years. It had been a look that hadn’t stopped following her since puberty.

Rey didn’t really know what compelled her to lift her chin anyway and sit down; perhaps she was just running on autopilot. The way she was asking questions certainly felt very mechanical.

But by the fifth time Hux had found some way to brush their hands together in his office hours, Rey was ready to stick his palm into his pointy nose and break it into pieces.

“I’m _already_ taking the integral of the conditional probability,” she said through gritted teeth. “Can you tell me what I’m doing _wrong_ though?”

She had also discovered very quickly that Hux didn’t know the material. His chin was about an inch away from her stiff shoulder as he peered at her paper, and Rey had just decided that was _it_ when –

Hux turned to the board, then his laptop, then the board again. _3/4_ , Rey saw he had written down.

“This should be the answer for number five,” he said, contemplating his own handwriting. _Idiot._ Rey was out the door before he could look up.

\---

School had always come easily to Rey, in the way that machines did and luck did not. She found it simple – she put in so many hours, letting the gears of her mind twist and turn on the material, she went in for the test, and instant validation! And she had never had trouble throwing herself totally into her work, a habit left over from the days when she would pick up books as a way to escape from her life, just for a few hours, just for another page.

The campus sidewalk stretched endlessly into the darkness in front of her, and Rey wondered, bitterly kicking a rock in front of her, why this security class was not coming as easily to her as school did. She couldn’t even reverse engineer the answer once she had it from Hux.

 _Idiot,_ she had called that creep TA _._ Apparently _she_ was the idiot. Slivers of light and dark passed over her as she walked under a tree.

The whole campus was partying on this Friday, Rey thought sourly, and here she was, on her way to Ben Solo’s office hours.

\---

 

The entire basement of the Computer Science building was basically empty at this time on a Friday night, save for some students who sat chatting in a corner.

Ben, predictably, was sitting as far as he could possibly be from the chatting students, barricaded behind a large backpack (black), and even behind _that,_ a hefty black and red gaming laptop. When Rey came closer, she saw that behind the laptop screen he was absorbed in an actual hardcover _book._

Wow, she had imagined him as the type to be playing Assassins Creed and harassing new users on Reddit, not reading a book on – was that classical Greek mythology?

Wait – it wasn’t even a book. The Oxford Classical _Dictionary._  

With difficulty Rey held back a shocked laugh.

Ben was so absorbed in his – in his dictionary – that he didn’t notice Rey until she forcefully cleared her throat, at which point he literally _jumped_ in his seat and slammed the book shut.

He stared at Rey for a second, brown – _caramel colored,_ Rey amended – eyes wide. Then he recognized her and his lips thinned, and there was the Ben Solo she knew.

“Hi,” Rey said briskly, all business, as she had sworn to be during this interaction, “Office hours? For the homework?”

Ben nodded, still stiff, but his face seemed to soften slightly as she unpacked her bag. 

“I – er – didn’t expect that people would start on this problem set so quickly,” he said, seeming almost confused.

“I have a busy week next week,” she muttered, and because she was Rey, couldn’t resist adding “and I felt like being a new woman this semester.” 

He didn’t respond in the slightest to the joke, continuing to look at her in that same confused manner. Disconcerting, that. And no, Rey, she told herself sternly, he did _not_ have puppy eyes, but couldn’t help but feel somewhat bad for interrupting this guy’s date with his book.

“I had a question on number 5,” she said, breaking the silence. He still looked confused and Rey wanted to bang her head against the table.

“Which one was that one again?” Ben scooted his chair towards her side of the table. “Do you have the homework open?”

Rey had frozen when he started scooting towards her, memories of Hux resounding warnings in her mind. Ben, though, only squinted at her laptop from a distance, carefully, it seemed to her, keeping his hands in his lap.

But the warmth from his gigantic body behind her was doing strange things to her mind, and she clicked erratically at her laptop, startled into forgetting where the hell she had stored the homework pdf. 

“Uh never mind, I’ll just pull it up,” he said after a few excruciatingly awkward seconds, scooting back to his side of the table and his gigantic laptop.

“Ahh, I see,” he said after a few seconds, and if there was any hint of his former iciness towards Rey still in his tone, it was gone now. Ben Solo fairly _hummed_ with eagerness _._ “Yeah, this is a good problem. What seems to be the trouble?”

“Well it’s pretty simple,” Rey started mechanically, “it’s just the conditional expectation of one variable given that the sum of that variable and another is greater than--”

“What do you think the answer should be?” Ben interrupted her. Rey blinked at him, confused.

“What is it intuitively? Go on,” he met her eyes, challenging her gently. “I know you know it. Say it.”

“Between 0.75 and 1,” Rey found herself blurting out. Ben didn’t quite _smile,_ but he looked pleased. _He loves teaching,_ Rey found herself thinking suddenly.

“Okay, now set up the integral,” he said, leaning over her paper. “Yeah, that’s good, you’ve set it up correctly here. 

“Alright but this is the thing,” The frustration leaked into her voice. “when I solve this I get a negative number. And I went to Hux’s office hours and he said that the answer should be 0.75. But I can’t get that with what I have set up here.”

“Oh,” Ben leaned back in his chair and grabbed his laptop. “Huh.”

“Yeah,” he said after a second, chuckling softly. “That would be because Hux’s wrong.”

“Hux gave me _the wrong answer?”_ Rey said, a wave of anger suddenly blossoming inside of her. That _creepy ginger_ _couldn’t even read the right answer off the solutions_?!

“Yeah,” Ben continued scrolling. “That’s not even the answer to any of the other parts.” He looked up at her and his lip twitched at the murderous expression on her face.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, not unkindly. “I can help you figure out where this went wrong. What did you do after this line?”

With difficulty, Rey breathed back her anger and returned to the problem, Ben peering at her paper with her, offering reassurance or a muted “hmm” every so often which would let her know she was wrong. It turned out it was actually a very simple mistake that she was making, and soon she was looking at the right answer. _5/6._

“That was...surprisingly easy,” she said, mind drifting back to the hours she had spent banging her head over this stupid problem.

“Yeah, you were really close all along,” Ben looked up at her, and the expression on his face bordered on something like respect. “You obviously know what you’re doing. It was just a small thing.”

“A small thing that none of the other TAs could find,” she grumbled. She raised an eyebrow at this Ben, so different from what she had expected, and hazarded a question.

“So what’s the deal with Hux? Is he malicious or just incompetent?”

She didn’t know if she was crossing the line by badmouthing one TA to another, but she was a) angry and b) somehow got the feeling that Ben didn’t like Hux very much either.

Surely enough, Ben just smirked.

“In general he’s malicious, but probably this time it was just incompetency,” he replied. “But,” he waved a finger at her, and miffed TA Ben was back. “You shouldn’t have been asking for answers in the first place, so --”

“I did _not_ ask him for answers at all,” she protested, “I _literally_ showed him this integral and he didn’t know how to solve it. How come you keep him around?”

Ben didn’t say anything to that, but his smirk went away as he seemed to consider something. Rey felt herself feeling somewhat put out. Which was ridiculous, of course. Why did she care if she could elicit a smile from this random, sour TA? The silence pervaded for a few seconds, and Rey was going to find some way to awkwardly apologize, when –

“Are you British?” Ben suddenly blurted out, and Rey almost laughed at loud at the expression on his face. He looked as if he had been trying to hold this question in for a while.

“I grew up in Britain, yeah,” she said, shrugging. Ben looked interested, and Rey wondered if traveling was another one of his secret hobbies, along with dying his hair and classical mythology. 

“I’m Rey, by the way,” she said, in order to avoid what she was sure his next question would be.

“Ray? Like, of sunshine?” A curious expression crossed over his features as he asked the question.

Rey sighed. “Yeah like sunshine, but spelled with an E in the middle.” 

“How did you get from Britain to – “ Ben began, but just then –

“Young Solo!” boomed a voice from across the basement. Rey looked gratefully towards the interruption. It wasn’t that she minded answering questions about her orphan childhood, God knew she had done it often enough that it didn’t hurt, but she didn’t fell like telling this TA right now. 

An older man whom she recognized as Professor Tekka of the history department was strolling over towards them. To her surprise, the look on Ben’s face had been transformed from interest into a scowl deeper than she had ever seen it before.

“Professor Tekka,” he fairly growled. The older man continued to beam at him.

“Well well well,” the Professor began, “It has been a _long_ time since I have seen you on this campus, Ben! I was just talking with your mother the other day – whom you should call, incidentally. Oh, I’m sorry, is this a bad time?” For Ben had stood up suddenly at the word _mother_ and was fairly throwing his things into his bag. 

“Yes you’ll have to excuse me, Professor Tekka. I’m afraid I’m missing a rather urgent commitment that I had forgotten about. Office hours are over,” he fairly barked, both at Tekka and Rey, and Rey shrunk back at the change in his tone.

“Well, goodbye Ben,” Tekka said somewhat wistfully. Ben didn’t even respond to the old man, Rey noted with shock. The effect of his retreat was somewhat ruined when Ben hit his tall head on the door in his haste to get out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First thanks all for the overwhelming response to this fic! Was not expecting so much love, this fandom is great <3
> 
> Well, well. Our first office hours ;) This chapter was actually really difficult to write -- I edited so so much before I felt like it was finally in a semi-readable state. Sadly a Kylo POV scene had to go, maybe next time! Let me know what you think of the chapter, here or on Tumblr (@theshiparoundthecorner) :) Love always.
> 
> Kylo Ren's Laptop (https://www3.lenovo.com/my/en/laptops/ideapad/legion-y-series/Legion-Y520/p/88GMY500808) in case you're curious.


	3. Rey Hates Memes

“Hello, hello! Look what we have here!” Rey turned to see Rose walking towards her under the dim streetlights, clad in her trademark tan jacket and whitewashed jeans. Rey grinned widely in response.

“Hey you! What are you doing here on a Friday night?” she asked when Rose reached her, interlinking her arms fondly with the shorter girl. It was a familiar walking pose for the two roommates.

“I was facetiming Paige in one of the empty conference rooms nearby. What about you?”

“Office Hours,” Rey said sheepishly. Rose nodded understandingly, but then understanding dawned on her and she gasped.

“Wait, were _these_ the office hours you were complaining about? With that Ben guy? How did they go? Did you tell him you were BFFs with his mom?” Rose grinned and Rey rolled her eyes in response.

“I did _not_ tell him that, and I’m so glad. Apparently he has some big beef with his parents. You know Professor Tekka from the history department? He ran into us and mentioned Leia to Ben, and the guy _bolted_ out of there. It was like the ‘shoving breadsticks in my purse’ meme but more rapid.”

Rose snorted at that last bit.

“I guess it fits though,” Rose chuckled. “He’s so troubled, so Byronic.”

Rey stared blankly at her.

“I forgot that literature was not your strong suit. He’s like, brooding, is what I meant. Kind of a drama queen.”  
“That he most definitely is,” Rey admitted, the image of Ben’s hasty departure still fresh in her mind. “But– he’s also a really good teacher. And a surprisingly huge nerd,” She would have gone on but she noticed Rose was giving her a funny look.

Rey cleared her throat. “Where are Finn and Poe? Do you want to do something tonight?”

“Ummm-” Rose checked her phone, Rey’s diversion having worked. “Finn’s with the Storm Troopers again. I don’t know _why_ that stupid acapella group always picks weekends for practice. And Poe’s in charge of like ten clubs so he could be basically anywhere. I think tonight is his square-dancing-with-the-elderly night.”

The two girls chuckled and then Rey suddenly looked at Rose.

“Hey, you want to go? Square dancing?”

And so that was all for Byronic Ben, Rey had thought as she danced with a friendly eighty-year-old from the nursing home. And it was, at least for the rest of the weekend.

\---

Rey didn’t believe in fate. She wasn’t particularly religious, despite the best efforts of one of her foster mothers to have her baptized at the age of twelve. She didn’t mind people who were religious – she just found it easier not to be bitter about her upbringing if she didn’t think someone had deliberately decreed that she should be bumped from town to town, and even across the ocean, in search of a home.

But freshman year, Poe had lent her this strange book, called _The Secret,_ and Rey had been smitten for a full year by the idea that she could attract what she thought about _._ She had told Finn and he had been equally as intrigued, and the two of them would meet for an hour each day to _think positive_ and visualize what they wanted.

Eventually they had realized that they were spending so much time envisioning good grades that they actually weren’t studying enough, and their positive thinking sessions had given way to tagging each other in inspirational quotes on Facebook.

“Oh my god, look at that gigantic _snack_ coming our way,” Robert, her fellow barista, fairly purred next to her. Rey looked up from the cash register, and suddenly remembered why she had been obsessed with _The Secret_.

Because why else would Ben Solo be idling in line with his nose in his phone, when she hadn’t seen him at this coffee shop since she started working here two years ago?

“Oh god,” Rey muttered. Obviously the Universe had detected her fascination and manifested the man here.

Not only had the universe manifested him here, but it had also decided to answer her question of what Ben might look like if he weren’t wearing black. And Robert had hit it square on the nose – the usually emo TA looked _good,_ with a dark grey blazer and crisp cotton shirt layered over black jeans.

Rey tried very hard not to stare as Ben approached the cash register, but it didn’t matter since he was squinting at the menu above her head and didn’t even look at her.

“Can I get a medium cappucino with--” he said slowly, and that was when he glanced at her and did a double take. “Oh! Rey, isn’t it?”

“Hi Ben,” Rey said, feeling Robert’s eyes fixated on the entire scene.

“I didn’t know you worked here?” his brow furrowed and Rey noted that he was also fazed by the coincidence.

“I’ve worked here for the last two years!” Rey said brightly, faking a confidence she didn’t feel. “So you want a medium cappucino with--”

“A shot of hazelnut syrup,” Ben completed. Rey nodded and rang him up.

Business was slow this lazy afternoon, and so Ben dawdled by the counter while Robert mixed up his drink. Rey fidgeted with the register and with the cap they had her wear as part of her uniform. The silence was quickly becoming awkward and she tried to think of some way to clear it.

“So… do you come here often?” she asked. The second after she said it she realized what that sounded like. Ben blinked and she could fairly feel Robert facepalming behind her.

“I mean, stupid question because obviously not, because _I’ve_ been working here for two years and never seen you, so --” as she rambled anxiously, one corner of Ben’s mouth turned up in a smirk.

“It’s okay. No, I – er-- don’t come to this area of campus very much.” They were in the coffee shop right outside of the business school.

“Oh,” said Rey lamely, resolving that since she couldn’t open her mouth in front of him without saying something dumb, she would keep quiet.

“I’m just here today because I was meeting up with a colleague from the EFF who’s now getting his MBA,” he continued.

“EFF?” Rey was suddenly interested. “Isn’t that where Snowden used to work?”

Ben let out a brittle laugh. “Yeah, I interned there all three years of undergrad. That’s where I first met Professor Snoke.”

Rey was just going to delve into this new piece of information (Snowden was an obsession of hers) when Robert finally appeared and pushed the completed drink towards Ben.

“Well, it was nice seeing you!” she said, smiling brightly. Ben looked surprised that she had said anything, but then gave her a half smile over his drink before walking away.

“Um, wow?” Robert said, when he was safely out of distance. “You know him?”

Rey rolled her eyes at him. “Don’t get any ideas. He’s my TA for a class.”

“Classes only last for one semester,” Robert said, leaning against the counter. “And you guys have great chemistry.”

“You could tell that from a two line conversation?” Rey raised an eyebrow at him. Robert shook his head and grinned, ruffling his brown hair.

“I can always tell,” he said. But then another customer came, and the conversation ended there.

\---

1:10 AM

OH _MY GOD Finn._

_WHY WOULD YOU TAG ME IN THIS? PUBLICLY?_

 

_Bwahaha_

 

_DO YOU KNOW I AM A BLACKBELT IN KARATE_

“ _Search your feelings; you know it to be true”_

 

_I WILL RIP YOU FROM LIMB TO LIMB_

2:02 AM

_FUCKING HELL ROBERT TAGGED ME IN IT TOO_

_\---_

“Okay,” Finn said was lounging, feet on a chair, open laptop apparently forgotten on the desk next to him. Rose was sprawled on the floor highlighting a law textbook, and Rey was sitting on her bed, where she had been happily giving belly rubs to Bebe, Poe’s tiny and fluffy dog. Poe didn’t live in the dorms, so he was able to own a pet, and he brought Bebe over often enough so that Rey and Rose didn’t gripe about the policy too much.

But poor Bebe had been forgotten upon this latest topic of conversation, Rey’s hand resting idly over his belly while she half frowned, half smiled.

“Why _shouldn’t_ we ship you two?” Finn pointed out, as if he were saying something of deep intellectual value. Rey snorted.

“I mean, he’s pretty old, isn’t he?” Rose asked, capping her highlighter.

“ _Thank_ you,” said Rey with fervor. This whole thing was just getting out of hand.

“He’s not that old,” Finn said.

“He’s twenty nine, that’s pretty old,” Rey said, turning her attention to Bebe again.

“Um, Rey,” Rose was looking at her, “How do you know that?”

“See?” Finn grinned and slapped his pencil down. “Case in point.”

“Oh come on, I LinkedIn stalk _everyone,_ ” Rey pointed out. “That doesn’t say anything!”

“Okay,” Finn said, “But there was the coffee shop.”

Rey groaned and Rose admitted, “You did talk about that for a while, Rey."

“And Rose, listen to this. Ben called Rey by her name when she asked a question the other day in class. Normally he’s like ‘Yeah you person, in this color shirt’ but this time he was like ‘Yes Rey?’”

“But how did he say it? Like gruffly, or softly?” Rose inquired.

“Definitely softly. It was very sexy.”

“This sounds so stupid, you know that?” Rey laughed.

“What sounds stupid?” Poe slipped into the room from the hallway, where he had been taking a phone call. Finn pointed at Rey.

“We’re talking about Rey and Ben. And it’s _not_ stupid.”

“Ben Solo?” Poe shook his head. “Nah, Dude’s weird. How could anyone have Leia as a mom and not like her?”

“I agree with that statement,” Rey said loyally. “And also, how lame is my love life that my greatest prospects are from a TA who said hi to me?”

“Fine, let’s talk about….Poe’s love life instead,” Finn said, spinning around to Poe. Bebe gave a whimper and Poe turned towards the dog, rubbing the soft white fur on his belly.

Rey looked at Poe and cleared her throat.

“Actually, Finn, can you help me with number two on the security problem set?” she asked, even though she had already done it. While Finn was droning on about his solution, she looked over at Poe and Bebe, and remembered their conversation a few nights ago.

Finn and Rose had been off somewhere, she forgot where now, and she and Poe had been studying in Poe’s apartment before they had been seized by boredom and late-night hunger and decided to go to Ihop.

She had felt that Poe had been somewhat off ever since they had come back to school; where he had always been alert and joking before, she often caught her friend zoned out now, generally more quiet and reckless. When he asked her to play “Mr. Brightside,” a far cry from the rap and pop he usually listened to, Rey had experienced enough.

“Okay,” she said, turning off the stereo, the world pitch black outside her window. “What’s up?”

“What?” Poe fibbed. In the back of the car Bebe gave a reaffiming bark.

“Even Bebe agrees with me. Something is up with you and I want to know what it is.”

“It’s nothing, Rey, it’s just...generic troubles, you know.” Poe concentrated on the road in front of him.

“Is your family all right?” Poe had the largest family by far of her friend group, with four sisters and endless cousins. Poe shook his head.

“Is it Finn?” she asked suddenly, giving voice to a suspicion which had populated her head for a while. Poe sighed, and Rey felt her heart sink.

“I always knew that he and Rose were going to be together some day,” he said, haltingly. “I just, I never expected to feel this way.”

Rey put a hand softly on his jacket and stayed silent for a moment.

“I know it’s hard,” she said finally, equally as haltingly. “I-- I don’t really know what to say. Finn is an easy guy to like. You know, I thought I had a crush on him once--” Poe gave her an incredulous glance.

“Not now! Like freshman year, for like two hours,” she laughed at the memory. “But then I realized that we were too good of friends and it would never work out.”

“I keep telling myself that it wouldn’t have worked out, either,” Poe said softly. “I think I’ll actually believe it soon.”

Love was hard, Rey had mused then, although she hadn’t said it to Poe, instead settling for rubbing his shoulder. Growing up was hard, and friendships in college seemed too deep to break until they suddenly did, or worse, were changed by time and rampant hormones.

Rey threw herself so deeply into her work partially so she didn’t have to think of all that stuff, partially because the merit scholarships she was on required an insanely high GPA. Between two jobs and school she didn’t have the time for a relationship. But this year, she thought wistfully, this year seemed to be the one where matters of the heart wouldn’t let her be.

And so she kept Poe’s secret and endured Finn’s incessant teasing with more enjoyment than she would have ever admitted. After all, Rey knew she didn’t _like_ Ben Solo – her hardheaded outlook on life wouldn’t let her believe that.

But this strange TA, Leia’s son, was probably the most interesting part of her week. Every time she went to class or dropped by office hours she learned something new about him – how he hated teaching students who just wanted the answers, to the point where he was really quite mean to them. She saw how he could code perfectly in front of the entire class when doing a demo (even the students who hated him had been impressed). How he was reading a different book (once she even found him reading a tome of philosophy) when she walked into office hours.

Rey had always loved learning but seeing Ben made her want to love it more – to understand the world on as deep a level as Ben seemed to.

So Rey had been poring over the security textbook in the library, one Saturday morning in mid-October, when she realized that she was late to her shift at the bike shop.

“Shit shit shit,” she swore under her breath, fairly running out of the library and grabbing her bike. Rey continued to swear as she zig-zagged towards the bike shop under the many-hued autumn leaves, feeling the wind hit her face as she rode the bike she had built herself.

With her luck, of _course_ there would be some sort of tourist party blocking all the sidewalks, she thought, zooming quickly to avoid an elderly grandma. She swerved again to avoid another group on the curved street in front of her, crossing quickly over to the right, when suddenly –

She had just enough time to scream _“Watch out!”_ , slam the brakes, and see a familiar face turn startled towards her when –

_BAM!_

Rey narrowly avoided falling off her bike from the impact, and _finally_ her brakes kicked into action. When she turned, a very annoyed Ben Solo was splayed on the side of the road.

“What the hell? Are you trying to kill me?” he griped, winded. He was sitting up in the grass by the pavement, bag in one direction and headphones in the other.

“Oh my god, oh my god I’m so sorry, I swerved and you came out of nowhere --”

“I’m like seven feet tall, woman! I haven’t come out of nowhere in my entire adult life!”

Rey stood stock still, motionless at this last sentence, when suddenly she started laughing uncontrollably. Peal after peal of mirth racked its way out of her body, and the tourists looked at her as if she were nuts. Ben blinked, and then got up slowly, his face softening dubiously.

“You know, I really should fail you for this,” he said, picking up his phone from where it had fallen besides him. Rey noted between gasps of laughter that the screen was thankfully uncracked.

“You won’t,” she said, feeling a sudden spark of recklessness. “I’m like the only student who asks you actual questions during office hours. And can read.” _And doesn’t hit on you,_ she added in her head, thinking of the gaggle of girls who were always unabashedly flirting with Ben during his office hours. Ben opened his mouth, but before he could say anything Rey’s phone buzzed in her pocket and her stomach dropped.

“Oh my god I’m late for work,” she said breathlessly, picking up her bike from where it had fallen.

“Don’t you work on the other end of campus?” Ben asked, and Rey shook her head at him briefly.

“Also at the bike shop,” Rey said distractedly, “I’m so so sorry again for hitting you, gotta go, bye--” and then she was off.

\---

Ben watched her bike off, still standing where she had knocked him to the ground. He would have thought the whole encounter was a dream, were it not for the pain in his arm where she had barreled into him and the half smile that refused to fade from his face.

He looked down into his hand and saw his phone, and then suddenly remembered who he had been calling, and now it was his turn to swear. The line, he realized with a sinking feeling, the line had been on the whole time.

“Hello, Snoke? Are you still here?” he said, putting the phone to his ear. The voice on the other side was silent for a moment.

“Who was that, Kylo?” the voice asked calmly. He swallowed nervously, picking up his bag from where it had fallen and continuing down the street.

“No one important,” Kylo said. He hoped that he sounded convincing enough. “Just some student; you know how annoying they can be.”

“She sounded like she knew you quite well,” Snoke said, almost thoughtfully. “I hope you have not been neglecting your duties for...other pleasures.”

Kylo swallowed dryly. “You have trained me too well to allow that to happen,” he said softly. Where the colors in the trees had seemed beautiful before, they now seemed macabre, clownish, as Kylo walked along the sidewalk.

“Let us hope so,” the voice continued. “Back to our original discussion; did you and the Knights obtain the documents I asked for? Or are you, shall we say, too squeamish at the thought of hacking into your dear mother’s servers?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, that was a lot of fluff! Late chapter but more to make up for it :-) Have a lovely week, let me know what you thought either here or on tumblr (@theshiparoundthecorner). Thanks for your love and kudos <3
> 
> And shoutout to @coraxenca for some lovely fanart of the last chapter! (https://coraxenca.tumblr.com/post/170721993387/ben-predictably-was-sitting-as-far-as-he-could)


	4. Ben Works Out

**Chapter 4.**

 

 _One._ In one fluid motion, Kylo drove his arms upward, pulling his shoulder blades back and down onto the bench behind him. Slowly he lowered the weight in a straight line towards his chest, breathing heavily, the thoughts that had been running through his mind splintering into a million images as the weight came closer.

 

_Twenty students in a wooden lecture hall, some looking up at him with bright eyes, some absorbed wholly in their laptops. Professor Tekka’s freshman history class. The first class he has ever TA’ed._

 

 _Two._ He heaved his arms upward again.

 

_He is sitting at lunch with his parents, a line from Thucydides repeating itself again and again in his head. He is a history major and he thinks arrogantly that he has a near photographic memory, and so lines tend to stick in his mind the way songs get stuck in his friends’ heads._

 

“ _You need to learn to do something with your hands, kid,” his father points to him, breaking his reverie. Uncle Chewie moans something, presumably asking his father not to begin this conversation yet again._

 

“ _Oh be quiet Han,” his mother retorts. “History is a perfectly good major for going into law. He’s going to be a lawyer, why do you always want him to be a mechanic?”_

 

_Ben swallows his pasta dryly. He doesn’t know how to tell his mother that law is just something he had mentioned in passing. She’s clung to the idea with so much fervor that he doesn’t have the heart to inform her that he really wants to be a professor._

 

 _Three._ His tight black First Order workout shirt was completely drenched in sweat. Kylo wondered what the point even was of exercising if he couldn’t escape his thoughts even here. With renewed vigor he launched the weight upwards and wished to forget.

 

_He logs onto Reddit to get his fill of the latest news, his username (vaderHeir2828) still woefully the same since when he created the account illegally at twelve. Unfortunately this username doesn’t usually win him many points in the debates on government surveillance that he usually finds himself embroiled in. But there is another user (SupremeSnk) who has taken a liking to him and supports all his points vigorously._

 

 _Four._ He pushes up again.

 

_Ten years after he first creates his Reddit account, he finds out SupremeSnk is no other than his now advisor, Professor Snoke. At the time it seems so fitting, so perfect, that this man who is giving him the chance to be part of something bigger and better is the same man whose arguments he has grown up listening to._

 

_Five._

 

_Is he still part of something bigger? Something better?_

 

 _Six._ Kylo’s mind skitted away from this question, as it had so often over the past few days. He heaved again, his biceps shining with sweat, and his mind moved to a completely different place.

 

_A girl in a yellow shirt stumbles through a row of crowded students and falls in her seat. Once when he was a child and at the beach, he had seen a ray of sunshine break free of a cloud, and dance across the surface of the ocean._

 

_And it turned out that her name was Rey._

 

 _Seven._ Kylo cursed under his breath. God, did he hate himself for thinking such sentimental _shit._ He pushed the weight up as if it was personally responsible for all his disgusting drivel running through his mind.

 

_He is seven and sick and the most recent of his nannies has just quit, and so his mother has no choice but to bring him to the Capitol with him. He sits quietly through most of his mother’s meetings, reading, until –_

 

“ _I don’t give a damn about your recommendation, sunshine,” the politician is old, white, and even second-grade Ben is somehow sure he’s seen the man on television before. Leia, the youngest senator ever elected from New York, just sighs and prepares to continue on with her argument, when suddenly a tiny black-haired body launches itself onto the surprised old man and starts kicking and screaming._

 

“ _You – can’t – talk“ “Ben, let go! BEN.” “Can’t talk to my mom like that you old, fat – ow, Mom!”_

 

_Leia has finally dragged her son off the much harangued politician. She scolds him then, but later recounts, laughing, how that politician has never called another woman sunshine. Ben swears that he never will either._

 

 _Eight._ Kylo’s phone buzzed in his pocket, and he slowly lifted the weight back into its resting position before pulling it out of his sweatpants. The only notifications he allowed during lifting came from one number. And if he was receiving messages from that number, it meant that Snoke had been trying to contact him for a _very_ long time. Which meant Kylo was screwed, he thought, sighing and thinking of the dark bedroom that waits for him.

 ---

 

When Rey and Finn slipped into class five minutes late (with Starbucks, of course) Rey was shocked to see the familiar figure of Ben Solo was missing from the podium, instead replaced by a slight, lurking bald man with the most _ridiculous_ outfit she has ever seen. He was wearing a dull _gold_ blazer, black dress pants, and pointed _slippers_ made from a type of rough cloth.

 

“I guess Professor Snoke had to come back some time,” Finn whispered to her, his eyes also fixed upon the podium. Rey finally put two and two together and realized this must be the professor who had been absentee for the last four weeks.

 

Without really thinking, she swept the room with her eyes, looking for Ben’s tell-tale dark hair and broad shoulders, finally finding him hulking in the front row. Snoke switched the slide and Rey looked back up at the odd figure standing before them.

 

“What on earth is he wearing? He looks like a cantaloupe decided to make a run of Las Vegas,” she whispered to Finn. Finn snorted loudly, drawing dirty looks from a few students near them. Normally Rey wouldn’t care, except that Ben turned around and _glare_ _d_ at the pair of them from a few rows ahead.

 

His eyes lingered on her and Finn for a split second too long ( _probably an accident,_ she told herself later) before he spun around again and fixed all his attention on Snoke. Rey’s eyes followed.

 

Despite how much fun she might make of Snoke’s clothing, Rey realized, she didn’t think there was a way to make light of his strangely dark eyes. They stared widely and shrewdly out into the crowd, complimenting the oddly soothing quality of his voice; Rey thought it would be very easy to listen to that voice forever. Her skin prickled uncomfortably.

 ---

Kylo slammed the lid of his laptop closed, breathing hard as he yanked the power cord out . For a second he tried to stop seeing stars before he groaned and opened the laptop again; he’d left his secure email account, Tor, VPN, everything open.

 

One of these days he was going to get himself thrown into jail, he thought sourly and not for the first time. Then again – the series of progressively colder messages from Snoke over the past week arose in his mind – perhaps he’d be more safe in jail than out here, if he didn’t make some progress in the next few weeks.

 

As he locked his room, his phone buzzed once, then twice, and he knew the Knights must have been messaging him on Discord. Kylo ignored the buzzing and strode purposefully through the night to the computer science building where he was holding office hours. He needed to calm down, he thought abstractedly, he didn’t want his students to see him like this.

 

But the one student who he enjoys teaching doesn’t come tonight. For the first time the entire semester.

 

As the clock moves from six to seven and still there is no sign of her, Kylo began to tap his feet rapidly. He was boxed into his usual corner, scrolling the internet quickly, then angrily because _dammit, he c_ _ould_ _n’t search for what he need_ _ed_ _to search for here, not on the University network,_ and was that her?

 

No, it was that fifty-year-old who also frequented his office hours; God knew why someone retiring so soon had decided to come back to school anyway, he thought contemptuously, giving reign to his most bitter thoughts tonight.

 

When the older man has _finally_ left and Kylo’s teeth have ungritted themselves, the clock read eight-thirty. His office hours finished at nine, he thought. He dawdled some more, erasing the whiteboard and packing up his bag, when a quick step resounded through the room.

 

For a second he allowed himself to hope, but when he looked up, instead of seeing Rey’s willowy build he saw someone...related.

 

Her friend from the other day stood in front of him in a familiar leather jacket, bag slung carelessly across his shoulders; he recalled suddenly the way she had been whispering into this boy’s ears, how this boy’s arm had been slung across Rey’s chair in a sort of casual intimacy.

 

 _Of course._ If Rey couldn’t come in person, of course she would send her boyfriend.

 

The disgust at himself mixed with the sudden haze that enveloped his vision, and suddenly he knew what he wanted to do. The boy sat down in front of him and opened his laptop innocently, having clearly not noticed that something is brewing in Kylo’s mind. _This will be fun,_ Kylo thought to himself. The wolf inside his mind grinned toothily.

\--- 

Rey waited outside Ben’s closed office door, nose in her phone and fist enclosed around a wad of tissues. God knew, she thought, sniffling into one of them, why Ben had decided to move his Office Hours to his _actual_ office instead of the computer science building.

 

Her mind drifted back to Friday of last week, when she had been confined to her bed with a 102 degree fever and had sent Finn to office hours instead of herself, because come sickness or health, problem sets went on.

 

It was the ashen look on Finn’s face after coming back that made Rey doubt whether she really should be here right now. Rey didn’t really know what had happened except Finn swore up and down that he would _not_ ship Rey and that nutty TA, Ben Solo, anymore, and something about being sad the withdrawal deadline had passed, and _did Rey know what the message passing algorithm was for Bayes Nets, because they needed that for problem 3_?

 

Rey had looked at number three and determined that either Ben or Finn was going crazy, because it only required some rather simple probability.

 

Standing against the door now, she coughed deeply into the tissue in her hand and cleared her throat. She _really_ shouldn’t be here right now; the fever hadn’t even gone down completely. But – here she felt a swoop of nervousness in her stomach – she had found out this morning that she had apparently _failed_ the last homework for this class.

 

“-- I’m _OBVIOUSLY_ trying, we all are –“ Ben’s raised voice suddenly echoed through the shut door, and Rey pricked her ears up. “When the moment came I didn’t hesitate, how can you –“

 

Another voice – _Snoke’s voice, she realized –_ said something softly and Ben fell quiet. Rey was about to shamelessly move closer to the door when it opened, and the professor himself strode out. She barely noticed his absurd slippers and blazer up close, confronted suddenly by those dark eyes as they looked upon her frozen body. She stood against the wall, frozen and feeling cold all over. Within a moment, the professor broke her gaze and strode purposefully down the hallway.

 

When Rey recovered her ability to move, she peered into the room. Ben was sitting at his desk , studiously staring at his laptop. _He was wearing glasses,_ she realized, noting the black (of course) square frames that rested across his nose.

 

For some reason, the thought that broad shouldered, intelligent Ben Solo had his own genetic defects was somewhat...endearing? Rey shook her head to clear it of that treacherous line of thought before walking into his office.

 

“Hi,” she said, when the silence had become awkward. She was abruptly taken back to their first meeting, where the silence had also stretched just a few seconds too long.

 

“Hello,” said Ben, finally looking up at her, his voice just a little...cold? His face looked haggard, the beginnings of a five-o-clock shadow adorning his normally clean-shaven face. _Utterly exhausted._

 

“So...” Rey said awkwardly, trying to break the silence while she unpacked her bag. “Professor Snoke’s finally back, huh? Right before the mid-” at that point her body decided that it was time to start hacking up a lung, and she doubled over into a coughing fit.

 

“Have you been sick?” she heard Ben demand, a note she couldn’t quite pinpoint in his voice.

 

Rey sat up, eyes watering and wheezing for breath, and glared at him.

 

“What do _you_ think?” she grumbled.

 

Ben looked appropriately sheepish and ran his hands through his hair. He turned away and mentioned something that ended in “last week”.

 

Rey was too distracted by his mussed up hair paired with his glasses to really notice. Boy did she like a man in glasses.

 

Good _god,_ she really needed to start dating or something, it was obvious that her college libido was out of hand.

 

Ben sat down next to her at the tiny table in his office, and probably because of his proximity and her own filthy thoughts, the coughing fit began again.

 

“What are you here for anyway?” He asked her, when she surfaced again for air. “That cough sounds terrible.”

 

“I had a question on number six,” Rey began awkwardly, hoping, hoping, that his next words wouldn’t be --

 

“That’s a bonus question, we can’t help with bonus questions.” Ben said immediately, and Rey’s stomach sunk. Well, there went _that_ hope. Ben must have seen the crestfallen look on her face, because he raised an eyebrow.

 

“You know normally I would absolutely encourage the pursuit of knowledge, but why do you need to do the bonus anyway if you’re sick? You’re already at the top of the class.”

 

“People who get 58 percent on the homework are at the top of the class?” Rey asked, looking at him incredulously and with a hint of blood in her cheeks. She didn’t like to admit her failures. Ben blew out softly through his lips.

 

“58? What? I thought the median on that homework was like 90,” Ben slid his chair towards her and Rey felt those pesky butterflies again. “Can you show me the grading really quickly?”

 

“I mean,” Rey pulled up the online grading site and scrolled through her abysmal homework. “I had a pretty high fever while I was doing it, so--”

 

“They marked off twenty points for number four?” said Ben, pulling her laptop towards himself. “Wait, let me read this...” Rey rocked back in her chair nervously as Ben ran his eyes over her homework. He cleared his throat.

 

“Just as I suspected,” he said after a second, looking up at her and laughing brittly. “It’s right. I mean, Hux graded this homework, so I’m not surprised – that _incompetent buffoon –”_

 

“It’s right?” Rey asked, surprised.

 

“I mean, it’s kind of roundabout.Much less elegant than it could have been.” Rey held back the desire to snort at that. “But yeah, you definitely should have gotten credit.” He looked up at her and half smiled. “Congratulations, you just got a seventy eight.”

 

Rey sighed a sigh which quickly turned into a renewed coughing fit. When she finally came up for air, Ben regarded her with a mischievous glint in his brandy-colored eyes.

 

“And let’s see about that bonus question?”

\--- 

When Rey was out of questions and started packing up, Ben also began to shove his things into a leather (black) bag and grab his coat from behind him. It _is_ late, she thought to herself as he locked his office door behind the two of them. Still, she found it strange to think of Ben going back home – she wondered what kind of home that must be.

 

They walked out in a silence that she didn’t trust herself to break without coughing again. But when he held the door open for her and she stepped outside and saw the falling raindrops, she let out a groan. Of _course_ it would be raining, just when she had a cold.

 

She allowed herself a moment to wallow in her misery, then squared her shoulders and put the hood of her jacket up. What had to be done, had to be done.

 

“You can’t be serious,” Ben said from behind her, having just pulled one of those small umbrellas from the depths of his bag. “You should _not_ be out in this weather while sick, especially without an umbrella.”

 

“Any better suggestions, _mom_?” Rey asked snarkily. Ben ignored her and just popped open his umbrella.

 

“Lead the way,” he said, gesturing out into the rain. Rey spluttered and made to argue, but roughly two minutes later, they were trudging towards the direction of her dorm, Ben’s umbrella held over both their heads and Rey dragging her bike along with her.

 

“I’m so sure this is _not_ on your way,” she grumbled. Her face felt hot and she was pretty sure that was a blush and not the fever.

 

“No actually, your dorm is – pretty central,” Ben said, so unconvincingly that Rey had to laugh.

 

Around them, rivulets of rain washed down the gutters and the clouds turned the world silver. Ben’s huge body exuded warmth next to hers, and every so often his hand, holding the umbrella, knocked absently into her shoulder. It was _too_ comfortable, Rey thought, looking up at the line of his jaw and frowning.

 

“Why are you so nice to me?” she asked suddenly, figuring that this environment is one in which it is perhaps safe to give voice to a thought that has been nagging her for a while.

 

Ben looks down to her with that confused expression, lips partly open, and Rey delves on determinedly.

 

“I’m serious! From the stories about you, you should have murdered me by this point and left my body in a ditch in the rain. I mean, you were so mean to Finn last week, yet you’re so nice to me? I don’t get it. _”_

 

“Ahh,” Ben said, his eyes suddenly hard again and looking straight ahead. “I see. Your boyfriend came back and complained to you, did he?”

 

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Rey threw back reflexively. The words stood in the air for one second before her mouth popped open and she realized what he had done. “Ah ha ha, smart,” she said, looking up at him with a wry smile on her face.

 

“What?” Ben asked innocently, but a smirk was also playing on the corner of his face and his eyes weren’t as hard anymore. Goddamn, she had to crane her neck to see his face from this close proximity.

 

 _You knew accusation would be a good way to find out if I have a boyfriend,_ she thought to herself, but merely shook her head and smiled with her lips closed. Ben seemed about to press her and she was just starting to wonder to herself if this was flirting (an area she hadn’t had much experience in), when suddenly thunder _roared_ around them and they both jumped visibly.

 

“Uhh, okay, we should probably wait somewhere until this passes?” Ben said, looking nervously at the trees surrounding the path they are on. Rey nodded her head in terse agreement, hitting herself in the foot with her bike pedal and wincing.

 

“The Earth sciences building isn’t far from here and I have a key.” Ben said, looking down at her, slightly nervously, it seemed, for affirmation. Rey looked up at him and smiled wryly at her luck.

 

“Lead the way,” she said softly, gesturing out into the rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We meet again, dear readers! Apologies again that this chapter is late. But it's so long I had to cut it off part way and there *is* a 700 word weight-lifting-scene, so I don't feel too bad. Hope you enjoy, for some reason the tenses were giving me trouble. Should I switch to present tense? My eternal dilemma.
> 
> As always, much love to the lovely artist @coraxenca for the fanart of the last chapter (https://coraxenca.tumblr.com/post/171274678337/rey-tried-very-hard-not-to-stare-as-ben-approached). 
> 
> If you like this fic, please let me know here or on Tumblr (@theshiparoundthecorner) and share with a friend! Your comments make my week.


	5. Here Comes the Rain Again

Ben has gone so long without someone to love. Let alone love, he has gone so long without someone who he can even get to know better.

 

He had had a few friends as an adolescent, moody pubescent boys with whom he had smoked his first (and only) cigarette and talked about Nietzche, sitting on the roof of the prep school his uncle had owned. God, they were a bunch of pretentious asses; he had lost touch with all of them quickly after leaving that school.

 

And then there was Snoke, whose presence kept Ben on the path he had chosen so long ago – rebuilding the sordid government that his mother not only took part in, but symbolized. ButSnoke did not inspire or encourage love; his presence filled Ben’s soul like sealant filling the cracks in concrete.

 

For any spare time on the side, there were occasional nights at a seedy bar with Hux and Phasma, where he would drink more than he should to dull the impact of Hux’s idiotic comments and Phasma’s cool, shrewd gaze. He went mostly out of boredom, and to make sure he didn’t lose the power of speech after days and nights coding in his room.

 

When Ben had found himself in the grips of jealousy upon seeing Rey’s (not) boyfriend last week, he had sat down to try to categorize the reason for his irrational behavior towards this girl. After all, he barely knew anything about her, right? Eventually he decided that was the draw – that she was a change.

 

And – Ben snuck a surreptitious glance at Rey as they walked to the Earth Sciences building – it didn’t hurt that she was also absolutely beautiful. Today especially, he thought, with her hair pulled into a frizzled bun above her too-big yellow windbreaker, and the silver light from the clouds bringing out the freckles dusted across her skin. Rey turned towards him as if to say something and Ben drew away his eyes hastily, sure she had caught him looking.

 

Indeed, the smirk she had been wearing only intensified, and Ben felt a sense of increasing discomfort. She had been wearing that odd little smile since Ben had impulsively chucked out the angry words about her _boyfriend,_ instead of snapping at him as he had expected.

 

It reminded him of the look his mother used to give him when he played chess with her, when he had made a wrong move and she was just _waiting_ to corner him. Ben hadn’t been much of a chess player – too impulsive. His dad used to joke that was the only trait his son had inherited from him.

 

Ben remained lost in his thoughts and Rey remained quiet in hers until the Earth Sciences building loomed large in front of them, and Ben dug his hands around in his pocket.

 

“What kind of key is that?” Rey asked, peering around his shoulder, and Ben realized...perhaps she should not be seeing the odd contraption that he held now, a thin box the size of an ID card but much thicker.

 

“Erm, it’s --” he ran through a list of excuses in his mind. But Rey was looking at him with interest glimmering in her eyes, and it _was_ an interesting subject after all --

 

“It’s an ID card mimic. Basically, your ID card plays a certain frequency whenever you get close to a card reader, so the University can always tell where you are. This – uh -- really bothered me when I was an undergrad, so I hacked together a system that would play the correct frequency from a janitor’s card for each building. So the university can’t track where I am.”

 

“And you can get in anywhere?” Rey frowned. “That seems dangerous, no? In the hands of say, a criminal or something?”

 

Ben shrugged and held the door open for her. “I mean, restricting access to certain places is fine, but could you imagine if the government was tracking every building you went into? Not that they don’t, but if they did it openly people would be mad. And yet we’re fine if the university does it.”

\---

They walked through into the lobby, which smelled like must and had definitely seen better days, and Rey frowned and sat down on the first sofa she saw, shedding her yellow windbreaker to reveal a blue long-sleeved shirt.

 

“I see what you’re saying, but I feel like there’s something wrong in your argument. Like, there’s an inherent difference between the government and university, no? I mean – _Aa,_ _aa_ _choo!_ ” A gigantic sneeze erupted from her and pre-empted the vague argument she had been intending on making.

 

“Wow, you sound terrible,” was the helpful comment that came from Ben. He was sitting on the couch on the left of hers,still wearing the thick dark jacket he had worn outside.

 

“Yes, bless you, Rey,” she muttered sarcastically into the tissue she had grabbed from the coffee table. Her sarcasm came out more as a congested gurgle though, and Rey leaned back into the sofa and sighed out lengthily through her mouth. The Tylenol she had taken liberally this morning was definitely wearing off; she felt the beginnings of the chills coming back.

 

“Rey, are you alright?” Ben asked, sitting at the edge of the couch and gripping its arms with his large hands. His concern would have been comical if Rey had been feeling better.

 

“I’m fine, I just have a light fever,” she said, drawing up her legs into her body and zipping up her gigantic windbreaker again. It was damp but at least it was warm, and her body was clamoring for warmth.

 

“Fuck,” said Ben, looking even more worried (which had not been her intention). Just at that moment, a spark of lightning zipped across the sky and Ben winced. “What can I do? I guess that if I call the hospital or something they can get an ambulance out here, even though there’s not really a street--”

 

“Oh my god,” Rey groaned, “please do NOT call an ambulance. It’s not bad at all. I’m absolutely fine. I’m just cold.”

 

“Cold? OK, wait--” Ben sprung into action and before Rey could articulate her protest, he had unzipped his jacket. “Here, take this.”

 

She just had time to register his large hands tucking it around her shoulders like a blanket, before he had muttered something about a thermostat and had vanished behind her. Ben’s jacket was heavy and soft on the inside, obviously expensive, and she snuggled into it and tried to keep her teeth from chattering.

 

The lobby was dark, with silver light filtering in through the windows on either side, and very quiet, except for Ben stumbling around somewhere behind her.

 

“I can’t find the light switch, let alone the thermostat --” she heard him mutter. Again, his obvious discomfort would have thrown her into splits of laughter, but as it was, she just smiled.

 

And then two seconds later, something _crashed._

 

“Why the hell do they have so many fake plants in here?” came a very disconcerted voice, followed by a few more thuds.

 

“Ben,” Rey sighed, and then because he kept muttering, she repeated more loudly. “ _Ben.”_

 

He appeared almost instantly in front of her, a decidedly worse-for-wear plastic tree in his hand. “Yeah? Yeah, Rey, are you OK?”

 

“Can you...okay, can you put that tree down and give me your hand for a second?”

 

“What?”

 

“Just – just trust me for one second, okay?” Ben put the tree down and complied, and Rey took his hand (his ridiculously gigantic hand) and placed it experimentally on her forehead. Understanding finally dawned on Ben’s face.

 

“Oh, yeah, you’re definitely hot,” he said, and then, “I mean- not _hot_ but you know-”

 

Rey resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

 

“Yes, I knew that, but what temperature do you think?”

 

“What do I look like, a thermometer?” Ben griped. Rey glared up at him.

 

“ What, have you never met a person with a cold before? Just give me a ballpark, less than 100, less than 102?” She then realized maybe Ben _hadn’t_ ever done this before – after all, he’d grown up in a cushy Senator’s home. But Rey had been right in that her taunting would raise Ben’s hackles, and he at once buttoned his mouth and sat down besides her on the couch.

 

He flipped his hand over her forehead a few times. His skin was...surprisingly soft, and Rey found herself leaning into his hand, before --

 

“I think between 100 and 101,” he said finally, removing his hand quickly and looking away from her, the light from the window illuminating half his features.

 

“If it’s below 101, it’s fine,” she said. When Ben, still not looking at her, made to get up again (presumably to chase after the thermostat) she swatted at him.

 

“Would you sit down? You’re making me nervous. Just – just sit here for a second...with me.” The last was said in a quiet tone of voice; Ben finally obeyed and turned so that he was parallel to Rey on the couch, black sneakers resting on the edge of the coffee table and hands thrumming his jean clad knees. Every so often, he cast anxious and short glances towards Rey, clearly expecting her to faint or something.

 

She glanced out the window at the still-falling rain, and the clouds that loomed ominously above, and rested her head on the back of the sofa. Ben’s jacket was warm and enveloping around her; this would have been so calm, if it weren’t for the anxiety of the overgrown man next to her.

 

“When I was little,” she started after a while, mostly to take the edge off of Ben’s fidgeting, “I used to love the rain so much. I built my own rain harvesting system outside and had this elaborate system to send the water to my tiny garden. Of course, most of the plants were like, cacti, which didn’t really need water, but still.”

 

“You had a garden with cacti,” Ben looked quizzically at her, “in Britain?”

 

“What? Oh, no,” she laughed and shifted so that she could see him more clearly. His knees were in the air and he looked very cramped. “I’m originally from Britain, but I grew up in Arizona. The desert.”

 

“My parents --” she preempted the question she knew was coming, and looked up at the ceiling as she spoke. “my parents...vanished when I was around three. Or four. They don’t really know. So I was in the British foster system, and then they got a message when I was ten that some wealthy couple in America wanted very badly to adopt a British girl. They were some ranchers who lived on a gigantic plot of land in Arizona. I don’t really know why they wanted a British child; maybe it was for the novelty.

 

I didn’t really want to go, because I thought...I thought that my parents would never find me in America, if they came looking. But of course I had to come anyways, and then it turned out that there had been a mistake. Apparently the couple wanted a boy, and not a girl. And so I ran away before they could send me back, and it was around six months before they finally tracked me down. I was working for this mechanic in Tuscon, Unkar Plutt, because I was good with machines even then. After the foster system tracked me down, he officially took me in as his foster child and I went to school in the morning and worked in the shop in my free time.”

 

It didn’t hurt to tell this story now, Rey thought, she could be detached from it. But she still looked towards Ben’s face very carefully for his reaction; she was a person who didn’t react well to pity, or even sympathy which she mistook sometimes for pity. Finn told her it was one of her shortcomings.

 

But Ben didn’t give her the “Oh, I’m so sorry!” that was the standard response she hated. Instead, he just nodded carefully and looked down at his hands in silence. His words, when they came, were quiet, which made their content even more unexpected.

 

“Have you ever read Anne of Green Gables?”

 

Rey laughed in shock. “Yeah, yeah I have. I actually read it before the whole Arizona fiasco. After that it was a little bit too depressing to look at.”

 

Ben nodded again, and Rey nudged his shoulder playfully with her jacket-covered arm.

 

“Still, I didn’t quite pin that as something _you_ would have been reading.”

 

Ben snorted, and the sound lingered in the room for several seconds before his quiet voice spoke. “I didn’t either. But once I complained to my mom that it wasn’t fair that our teacher was making us read books like _Little Women_ , which were only for girls. After that, she made me read only women authors for an entire year. So _Anne of Green Gables, A Little Princess, Jane Eyre,_ I’ve read them all. That was probably the year my vocabulary improved the most.”

 

“Wow, amazing mom.” _Why do you hate her so much?_ Rey thought to herself. But Ben’s shoulders had tensed at her words, and so she didn’t voice the question that had been plaguing her for so long. They sat there for a few minutes more, Ben lost in his thoughts, Rey thinking of Leia.

 

This time, it was he who broke the silence.

 

“I actually used to hate the rain.” Ben tried to move his legs down from their awkward position but there wasn’t enough room under the coffee table, so he went back to his somewhat ridiculous position.

 

“I hated it so much I used to shut all the windows and turn on all the lights, and I’d even get the – uh – Christmas lights and turn them on too. Sometimes I’d put blue papers on the windows too. I was home alone a lot so there wasn’t anyone to stop me. You might know this already but my mom was – is – a senator.” He looked to Rey, brandy-colored eyes wide and she gave just the barest hint of a nod. It was enough for him, and his face hardened.

 

“Then you might also know that my dad was a pilot in the military, or defense contractor or something, to this day I don’t really know. Everyone in my family has been involved in the US military or government in some way. My grandfather – did you know my grandfather was a spy?”

 

Rey shook her head, barely breathing at this point. Thunder roared outside once more, and Ben gave a bitter laugh.

 

“Yeah, a Russian spy in the 50s. McCarthy wasn’t wrong about everything. I guess I can’t blame Mom for not advertising the fact, but you’d think – I mean, I didn’t know myself until...”

 

“Until what?”

 

Ben turned towards her and smiled, a brief twist of the lip that didn’t reach his eyes.

 

“Until someone on the internet told me.”

\---

“Wait, what? That was it?” Rose was leaning against the doorframe of the entry to her room, where she had been standing for the last thirty minutes, drinking in every word of what Rey said.

 

Rey shrugged. “He didn’t really seem to want to say more? I-d-k man, I just sort of made some small talk after that. And then it stopped raining, and I went on my way and he went on his.”

 

“Huh.” Rose made a face. “Weird guy. Seems like a pretty decent one though, if you were stuck with him for that long and he didn’t try to make a move. I mean – unless you wanted him to?”

 

“What?” Rey tried to be the picture of nonchalance. “Me? Want? I think --” Rose was raising an eyebrow at her.

 

“He’s my TA after all, Rose! My TA!” she said desperately. “It’s so strange!”

 

“Love is strange!” Rose said, laughing and turning back into her room. “I’m not encouraging this, but I’m just saying, romance is strange!”

“Oh shut up,” Rey grumbled, following Rose. “Just because your love life is hunky dory --”

 

“It is not,” Rose sighed, “but that’s a discussion for another time. I was just thinking the other day though, that... It’s always the smallest, stupidest things that make people fall in love. It’s like, the way someone fumbles in the lunch line or the way they hold their shoulders. I don’t know, maybe I’m being sentimental.”

 

Rey said very little, assured Rose she wasn’t being sentimental, and made up some excuse about homework she had to do and went back to her room to lie on her bed and think.

\---

 

What she didn’t mention to Rose was that after Ben’s story and Rey’s small talk, in the last few minutes of the storm, silence had fallen and another sort of feeling had pervaded. In those moments there was only the pitter-patter of the rain slipping across the window and the glow of daylight, steadily fading, and Ben’s body beside her.

 

And who could blame her if, after this long and hard day, her head had slipped onto his shoulder, as they sat there in the falling darkness? And who could blame him if the arm, placed so carelessly on the sofa behind her, had been placed on her shoulder?

 

And who could blame them for sitting there like that a moment too long, after the rain had ended, for wasn’t that what this thing between the two of them was? Friendship, but a little too much? Little moments, like Rose had said, strung across the semester and adding up into something that Rey couldn’t give a name to. The next day she would call it a fever induced haze; the next day she would wonder how she would ever face this person who was really – really her superior, her _TA_ – again.

 

But in that moment she hadn’t thought any of this. She thought of it now though, as she lay on her bed and stared at the ceiling, wondering what would come next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And, that’s a wrap! I felt like I had to shift from endless sexual tension to a little more emotional buildup. Our two bbs barely knew anything about each other, after all :) And this chapter was a calm before the storm and all that.
> 
> THANK YOU ALL FOR 200 KUDOS! I'm overwhelmed and so grateful for the love <3
> 
> LMK what you thought, either here or on [ Tumblr ](https://theshiparoundthecorner.tumblr.com/)(@theshiparoundthecorner) and please share if you liked!! Comments/support/mutual fangirling are much appreciated and keep me going. 
> 
> ALSO I AM A TOTAL NERD AND THE [ID CARD](http://web.mit.edu/keithw/Public/MIT-Card-Vulnerabilities-March31.pdf) THING IS REAL


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